Bitcoin BTC$76,073.52 Wall Street bank JPMorgan said in a report on Monday that mining stocks started 2026 on a strong note, buoyed by weak network competition and renewed enthusiasm around high-performance computing (HPC).
The bank noted that the 14 U.S.-listed Bitcoin miners and data center operators it tracks ended last month with a combined market capitalization of $60 billion, up 23% from the previous month, far outpacing the 1% rise in the S&P 500.
The rally was partially supported by news that Riot Platforms signed an HPC deal with AMD for its 700 MW Rockdale facility, highlighting miners’ increasing diversification beyond Bitcoin.
Facing record-low profit margins since the 2024 halving, Bitcoin miners are repurposing power-dense mining sites into AI-enabled data centers and repositioning themselves as digital infrastructure providers in search of more stable long-term returns.
At the same time, valuations continued to rise. Analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce said mining stocks were trading at about 150% of the four-year block reward opportunity at year-end, about three times the average since 2022, highlighting the growing divergence between mining stock valuations and Bitcoin prices.
On the operational side, January brought relief. JPMorgan said the network’s average hash rate fell 6% month-over-month to 981 exahashes per second (EH/s) as winter storms across the United States forced widespread communications restrictions. During the month, hashrate briefly fell to 700 EH/s, while mining difficulty fell by 5% from December and 10% below November’s all-time high.
Hashrate refers to the total computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, and represents industry competition and mining difficulty. Measured in exahashes per second.
The decline in competition helped offset the decline in Bitcoin prices. Analysts estimated that miners’ block reward income in January was about $42,350 per EH/s in January, up slightly from December, but gross profits increased 24% to about $21,200 per EH/s due to improved network efficiency. Still, the bank said profitability remains well below pre-halving levels.
Stock price performance was generally positive. Twelve of the 14 miners tracked by the bank outperformed Bitcoin’s 4% decline in January, with IREN up 42% and CANG down 18%. Even after the increase, the group’s overall valuation remains about 15% below its October 2025 high.
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